On the Road to Find Out (25 page)

Mom told me she'd sent a nonrefundable deposit to both schools because while she understood that I might not be ready to make a decision, it was worth losing the money so I would have a choice.

I'd started getting mail from two colleges that each thought I would be in their freshman class next year.

Miles had talked about taking a gap year starting in January when he finished high school but I never thought
I
could do that. I was on a path, the straight-and-narrow course of the college-bound.

Could I step off the hamster wheel I'd been on my whole life?

 

25

When Potato got in the car, he jumped onto my lap and licked my face like a crazy person.

I couldn't help laughing. He tried to slip his tongue into my mouth, and I said, “No French-kissing today, doodlebug,” and then felt my face turn bright red.

Miles buckled his seat belt and leaned over to grab Potato off me. As he came close, I could smell his shampoo. His shoulder brushed against mine. Potato was wiggling and wagging and it seemed like it took Miles a long time—with his shoulder against mine—to get a grip on the squirming little dude.

He gave me directions to get to the trailhead.

I liked the way he navigated: he gave me plenty of warning and would say, “I'd turn left here,” as if I were making a choice and he was just letting me know what he would do if he were in my position. He was the opposite of that bossy Gladys from the GPS.

“Happy brown sign!” Miles said as we passed a sign that read
RECREATION AREA 3 MILES
and had images of a tent and two hikers with backpacks. “When you see a happy brown sign, you know something good is coming.”

I'd never noticed them. I barely remembered what the different colored signs meant from when I had to take my driver's test. I knew yellow stood for caution; brown probably meant recreation. I liked that he'd given it a name and knew that I would always think
happy brown sign
when I saw one.

After we parked and Miles opened the door, Potato charged out of the car and ran around and peed on everything he could find, including:

  1.  A tire of the only other car in the parking lot.

  2.  A flower.

  3.  A lot of trees.

  4.  The ladder to the slide on the playground across the street.

  5.  If I hadn't caught him in time, my leg.

Miles slipped a small pack onto his back. I hadn't thought to bring anything to drink. He saw me looking at him and said, “I've got plenty of supplies, including water for the tuber. There should be some out on the trail, but Harry worries if she sees me leave without water for him. I'm a cairn terrier's Sherpa.”

He gestured with his head toward the trail and motioned for me to go.

“Wanna?” he said.

I did.

At first it was open and we ran through a grassy meadow. Then the trail slid into the woods. It was single-track, so we had to run in line, not side by side. Potato dashed ahead. Sometimes he stayed on the trail, sometimes he ventured into the woods to chase squirrels, real or imagined. The trail climbed, and soon I was huffing and shuffling along.

“Do you want to go ahead?” I said to Miles. I wanted to walk, but someone had written on the
START
wall,
No one ever got better at running hills by walking them
. That went through my mind every time I got to a hill.

Plus, I didn't want Miles to think I was wimping out.

“I'm good,” he said. He sure was. He never had to breathe hard. He said, “I like the way you're attacking the hill—slow and steady. You've got natural talent.”

It struck me as strange to mention talent in relation to running. It seemed more like something that should apply to culture, like being able to carry a tune, or the way Jenni could look at a piece of material—wood, fabric, discarded Christmas ornaments—and transform it into something else. Running seemed so, well, pedestrian. You put one foot in front of the other to stop yourself from falling. All it took was the decision to keep doing it. You couldn't help but get better.

Miles continued. “Like Remy.”

“You saw it!” Hearing he had watched
Ratatouille
felt like a gift.

“I had to do some work to convince Harry. She didn't want to watch a cartoon. Said she stopped watching them with
Fantasia
, which was made by Disney, like, two hundred years ago. But I told her it was important to me, that the movie had been highly recommended by someone I trusted, so she agreed, with a bit of grumbling.”

“And?”

“Great thing about Harry. She says she loves being wrong. Now we've been on a binge of watching Pixar films. She said she was mortified to have been so bigoted, to have passed judgment without knowing what she was talking about.”

“And what did you think?”

“I think you're awesome.”

I was glad he couldn't see my face.

Then he farted. Three times, three little farts in a row.

“Must be ducks around here,” he said, and I busted out laughing.

About a minute later, I burped. Really loud.

We both laughed.

Even though the trail was still going up, being so comfortable around him gave me a shot of energy and I felt like I could keep going forever. I also felt kind of brave.

“Look,” I said. “There's some stuff I need to tell you.”

“That doesn't sound good.”

I took a deep breath.

Joan was right. Some conversations are easier when you don't have to face each other. “Well, you may not think I'm awesome anymore. You may think I'm a freak.”

“Doubt it.”

So I told him about Walter.

He said, “A rat? A real rat?”

“Yes.”

He said, “Huh.”

So I told him a bunch of funny Walter stories.

He listened and occasionally asked questions that showed it had never occurred to him that rats could be such great companions, but that now he understood. It felt so good to talk about my little dude. I missed him so much.

Then I told Miles how Walter had started to fail and I hadn't noticed. When I had to tell the final part, I couldn't keep running. I slowed to a walk.

After I finished talking, Miles put a hand on my shoulder and I couldn't help it, I began to cry. I didn't want him to know I was crying, so I started running again.

We were quiet for a while and then he said, “So that's why you haven't been around. I thought maybe you just didn't like me.”

“No!”
I said, too loud as usual.

I didn't turn, but I could hear him chuckle behind me. I was glad we couldn't see each other. I knew we were both smiling.

“There's something else,” I said.

“Just so you know, I'm even more convinced of your awesomeness.”

“Maybe not when you hear this. Eight of the best colleges in the country think I'm a loser.”

I told him about my thwarted plans to go to Yale, and about being rejected from all the other schools. He listened without comment.

Then I told him about the e-mail from the Boston rat lady.

He let out a whoop and said, “If you don't do this, you're nuts.”

“Really?”

“Really. It sounds like the perfect thing for you. Who cares about dumb old Yale?”

I thought, I do.

And then I thought, no, I don't.

“I'm pretty sure my parents would be okay with it. They have a bunch of friends in Boston. We've visited there a lot.”

“Yeah,” he said. He paused, and added in a soft voice, “And then, in the spring, you might want to try WWOOFing.”

I felt my heart pound, and not from running.

I thought, me? Travel around the world milking rabbits or shoveling bat poop or whatever people did on those farms? I couldn't do that.

We had gotten nearly to the top and the path was starting to flatten out.

Could I? Could I go WWOOFing?

The trail opened into a clearing. You could see all over the valley. It felt like being on the roof of the world.

Miles took off his backpack and plopped down on a big flat rock.

I wasn't ready to sit. I stood tall and noticed how green and full of life the forest was. The air smelled sharp and clean. I could hear birds messing around in the branches of trees and Potato snuffling after them. I held out my arms and twirled and sang as much as I could remember from Cat Stevens's “On the Road to Find Out.”

Miles just watched me for a while, with a wide smile on his face. He poured some water into a cup for the spud, then he pulled out a loaf of crusty bread and a jar of something. He held the bread up to his ear and, quoting from
Ratatouille
, said that the crust sounded good. He showed me the jar.

“Nutella. Chocolate and hazelnut. From Harry. She said we should have something sweet today.”

He had talked about me to Harry!

I sat next to him and Potato came and lay down alongside my legs, the way Walter used to.

I watched as Miles smoothed a spoonful of the dark brown spread onto a hunk of bread. He handed it to me.

OMG, it was delicious. Nutty and chocolaty—well, enough said.

“You got some on your snoot.”

He leaned in close and rubbed the tip of my nose. Even though it now probably had a combo of Nutella, sweat, old makeup, and skin oil on it, he put his finger into his mouth.

I held my breath, watching him, watching the finger.

He moved his hand from his mouth to my cheek.

To the back of my head.

He pulled me close and I could smell his shampoo again, and something else, something a little spicy, a little tart.

He whispered, “You wanna?”

I nodded.

He kissed me.

It was better than I could ever have imagined.

He pulled back, and when I finally opened my eyes, he was looking at me, looking at my face, and into my eyes in a way that made me squirm.

He said, “Woof.”

“Woof,” I said, and laughed.

Then we said together, “WOOF.”

And I kissed him again.

 

26

It wouldn't be real until I told Jenni.

She was in the kitchen with Mom. I grabbed her skinny arm and was going to drag her to my room, but then I changed my mind.

Instead I sat at the table. Mom got up to go, but I said, “Stay. Please.” I told Jenni and Mom in slow-motion what had happened. I lingered over the details. I recounted every single thing Miles had said to me and how I responded. And then I told them about what now seemed like solid plans for next year.

I waited for Mom to comment, to start asking questions about who Miles was and how I'd met him or where I was going to live in Boston, but she didn't. Her hands were clasped around her coffee cup and she watched me as I talked, occasionally nodding and smiling.

Jenni listened the way she always does, as if what I was saying was the secret to the meaning of life. She never interrupted, the way Mom and I often did. Or gave her opinion, the way Mom and I often did. When I was finally finished she said, “Oh Al, I'm so happy for you.”

Mom let go of her cup, leaned over, and took both of my hands in hers. She still hadn't said a word, but her eyes were shiny. She kissed me on the top of my head the way she usually kissed Jenni.

I felt full, and my heart was light in a way it hadn't been for a long time.

 

27

At graduation, in my
valedictory
(“bidding farewell”) speech, I said:

I am a reject.

I was rejected from my first-choice college.

I was rejected from my second-choice college.

And I was rejected from my third-, fourth-, fifth-, sixth- seventh- and eighth-choice colleges.

This seemed like the end of the world.

Then I finally looked up and saw how small I had made my world, how narrow my focus had been. I realized I'd cared about the wrong things and not paid enough attention to the people closest to me. I hadn't taken enough chances.

In the past six months I've spent a lot of time thinking about rejection, failure, and loss. When I look at the people I most admire, many of them have experienced something that looks like failure. But when you take the time to exercise your powers of vision with more imaginative strength, to peer deep into the curves and shifts of how real lives are lived, you see that what happens when you fail is that you get an opportunity to think harder, to think differently.

I used to hate being wrong. If I gave an incorrect answer in class—if I missed the sixth digit of pi or said the Civil War started in 1862—it would burn in me all day. If I got a 98 on a physics test instead of 100 because I left off the units, on the next test I would check every answer for units until my eyeballs bled. I stand before you now as valedictorian, top of the class, not because I cared so much about learning, but because I was afraid of not getting things right.

Along the way, I missed out on a lot.

I didn't spend enough time listening to the people I love, or getting to know my fellow students, or being involved in the community, or even hanging out at games where people throw projectiles at one another's heads. Though that last one may have been the result of an evolutionarily useful self-protective instinct.

My unwillingness to participate was partly out of a fear of being rebuffed and also a reaction against expectations. I know that many of the students who applied to the schools I was rejected by do just the opposite: they are involved in everything, spend all their time being busy, shuttling between clubs and practices and contests and conferences and they never have a moment to really think.

As it turns out, most of them got rejected too.

It's easy to be a critic. We know from President Theodore Roosevelt that it's not the critic who counts, not the man who carps and quibbles, not the woman who says “I shoulda” or “I woulda,” but the person who says, strong and loud and unafraid, “I tried.”